trouble sleeping?

This could be just the thing to help you doze off. Intended as sleep inducing, or wall paper for that dynamite party you're having next weekend, this video is sure to calm frayed nerves.

Photographed on three coasts (and counting) of the continental United States.

a taste of blinker

From a recent trip to visit Mom, on the occasion of her 93rd.

two views

or

I'm leaning towards the landscape view. Anybody?

more video fun

This week's extravaganza! It's a dream!

Falmouth Folly on Vimeo.

Greetings

Our semi-annual greetings go out to all.

Greetings From Earlysville from Man Made Wilderness on Vimeo.

they're on their way there

They've been found!

a view of northwestern

Parents Weekend 2012: who would have thunk I'd be going to a football game? Well, it was only half of one. If we had stayed for another two or three hours to see the end, the Cats might not have lost by 1 point. At least they were leading when we left.

on the other hand

Boston in July? Why not?

We'd never been, but it wasn't on a whim that we travelled this far into foreign territory. Months ago, after acquisition of one of motion picture technology's most favored devices - a Steadicam Pilot - it was recommended by one and all that a workshop should be included along with the Steadicam. The workbook is a great start, but the hands-on approach is a quick way to vault up the learning curve. At the time, the Boston workshop was the closest time wise as well as geographically.

In the few months between signing up for the workshop and actually attending in Boston, I've been able to get in a good bit of practice, find various balance combinations that do or don't work, and employ the device in the production of a short film, the self produced "Walking With Roscoe."

While the location of our hotel was less than ideal for direct access to famous tourist sites in Boston (it was chosen to be within walking distance to the workshop), public transportation in the Boston area is superb. The CharlieCard, which can be purchased in all the subway stations, permits access to the subway trains as well as the buses. It keeps an electronic record of the fare paid initially, rides deducted, and can be replenished electronically as many times as desired. Something this intelligent is bound to help immesureably with getting people to use public transportation. Which the Boston area residents surely do. Buses and trains are nearly always full, and they run on a frequent schedule.

It would seem that all the classes and workshops I take I already have a fairly good grasp of the material prior to arrival. This seemed to be the case with this workshop as well. At least I know the theory. The practice requires A LOT more practice. What our instructor, Director of Technical Services at Steadicam, Peter Abraham was particularly emphatic about is learning to use the Steadicam to carry a camera in a manner that truly emulates how a human witnesses the present. Or at least be aware of the manner of human presence, to create movement that contradicts the smoothed, rounded corners, short cutted way we travel through life.

Day 1 was theory and basic movement.

Day 2 was practice operating three different shots designed by Peter that permitted us to branch out and work in various spaces around the Rule/Boston Camera facility. Shot 1 was with the Panasonic AG-AF100 Micro 4/3 camera on a Pilot rig, and utilized a Don Juan move in the middle of the shot. Shot 2 used some large Panasonic video camera & lens on the Zephyr rig in low mode, camera flipped upside down and the monitor up top. A lot of gear to move around, it never felt very comfortable. Shot 3 was with a Sony PMW F3, a Zeiss 18mm CP2 prime, on a Scout rig. This was our Grand Prix shot, the only one recorded during the weekend. In fact, everyone looked pretty good.

And it was pretty nice to return home and be able to offer some Steadicam work to someone else the following day.

gone

click 'er for biggerSite's on autopilot for a week while we travel. I'll check in if I can find access.

welcome to northern NJ

The offcers didn't seem to believe they were in paradise. "I've seen better." said one. When I suggested that perhaps his elsewhere was merely different, he insisted "No. Better." South Kearny didn't seem to fit acceptable notions of beauty. I continued the discussion by elaborating upon the concept of finding beauty in unlikely places. He may have been curious, but he was far from convinced, other than possibly to think I was yet another looney citizen.

Sematic differences aside,  his uniformed associate was only moderately intent on issuing me a warning for so called tresspassing on railroad property - which happened to be the middle of a public thoroughfare. He had driven past me while I was standing about with my viewfinder in hand, trying to find the composition. We waved at one another. He was curious, but didn't stop, so I didn't realize that he was police. He didn't even see me with the camera set up.

Some time later when leaving the area, collecting snaps of pollution abatement signs, he passed again and decided he needed to talk to me. Under the impression that I was taking pictures of the railroad, I tried to make it clear that this was not the case. Alas, cops can't talk to citizens without turning it into official documented business. So at least half an hour after the "infraction" came the written warning. More evidence to support my theory that there are more police on payroll in New Jersey than anywhere else in the known universe. I never would have thought to include the CSX railroad police in the list. Now I know for certain that they exist.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the third cleanup site sign. Or the officers.

the jersey shore, too

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I guess you get used to it, if you spend some time on the island. Not sure I want to. Maybe through the winter. And there is of course the sand to deal with. And the sun. And the swelling population during the summer. Being the well known grouch that I am, I got out of there about as fast as I could.

a brief foray

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Back to the purely descriptive view. Once again, the lab is having troubles with the E6 machine, so I'm "reduced" to showing the pea shooter output.

We don't have landscapes like this around here, so this view results from a quick journey to the capital of the Confederacy. It's not far from here, and I find these places far more interesting than the restored portions of town. But then I realized, driving past the train station, that its neighborhood - amidst a thicket of massive concrete columns that support I95 and I64 with an incessant roar of traffic 75 feet above - is a completely transformed landscape. Entire city blocks have been closed off to the sky, and the station itself is crowded in by the interstate span that crosses the James River, passing only several feet from the front elevation of this Rennaisance Revival building from 1901. On the ground, the city has tried to make the best of a horrible situation, with a maze of pathways through a darkened "park" that never quiets. Was this an additional, intentional insult, 100 years after the end of the Civil War? No wonder we're still fighting here in Virginia.

too many gun totin' liberals

These good buddies need to get together.

everywhere at once

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Not far from here.

what I saw (pt 2)

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It seems we've seen the inside of quite a few box rooms in the past six weeks, affording the opportunity to see sights various and far afield from the home standard.

it only goes so far

"Camping World" - click 'er for bigger
Some time back, it seemed as if Mike Chisholm was chiding me for "stalking" my photographs. Maybe I'm taking it personally, or maybe I'm not so very unusual in seeing compositions and planning in some detail how to capture a view imagined for some time in the minds eye. This view is a good case in point: I noticed this spot  probably a year ago, but it wasn't until my recent return from mid continent that I had the time and inclination to stop and set up the camera. The location is at least two hours driving time from home and not really on the way to many places we head towards very frequently. This may not be the ideal time of day to have been here, but that's when I was passing by. Looks like we may be headed that direction again next week, so perhaps I can impose upon the fam to let me take some time to try again.

which way to go?

for my father-in-law; brother-in-law; nephew

Video or no video? In many respects, it's a bunch of horse shit. Why bother record hours of material that is either a lot of blathering, or in many instances can be shown with a series of single images?

After many hours of looking at video camera specs - perfectly good time wasted, never to be recovered - it's obvious that this capability does not come cheaply. Again and again I have to remind myself that mostly I prefer to work alone, or at least have gotten used to such methodology as a still photographer. What can I do alone as a videographer?

And yet... My recent travels - 2300 miles to the center of the country and back in the new, completely safe Prius - with JVC HD video cam in tow - have revealed some of the unattainable qualities of still photography. Movement within the image is the obvious additional factor. Even within a mostly static image, the merest whisper of a breeze animates the world in a manner unlike anything still photography can achieve. It's an incredibly seductive capability which inevitably is harnessed for the creation or depiction of the real world.* Nearly nothing mainstream in the cinema or television aspires to be anything but profoundly realistic. "It isn't realistic" being our primary gauge for the value of programming.

Sound, the second part of motion capture, is the much maligned second cousin to images. During production it's a nuisance and a profound complication. But it's reality enhancing abilities - something still photography isn't necessarily in search of - are generally considered to be worth the trouble. With enough manipulation sound too becomes as abstract - and perhaps even more provocative - as images.

The confusion is palpable. Even though I went all those miles across country and back, carrying the standard 4 x 5 kit as well as the rented video cam, it wasn't until I was once again within two hours of home that I was willing to stop and get out this seemly outmoded device: a still camera. Perhaps it was the newness of the video device which seemed to make still photography superfluous. Amongst the thousands of images that provided themselves to my sliding eyes, it was only one, that has been mentally manipulated previously, that motivated me to stop. This is the problem with travel: it's always easier to keep going, stay in the rolling cocoon, than to stop and set up a recording device.

The dilemmas of audience, funding, storytelling, technology, convention and more still swirl. All I know is that I've got several hours of HD video to edit, a prospect that appears challenging and even fun.

*The cynic in me can't help but recognize that the ultimate goal to which motion picture capture aspires is Reality TeeVee, which has become ubiquitous and is ever expanding. It manages, somehow, to combine the dual impulses of photography: to document the real world, and create a spectacle of it. David Foster Wallace has written tellingly, especially in Infinite Jest, of the dominance of entertainment programming in our lives. 

getting pushed around

Some detritus from the last snow storm.

comcast buys nbc

Old news...Are we supposed to care?

The 3D sucked, and the flat version was cheesy. But otherwise the display technology was impressive. The "holiday" display in the Comcast headquarters, that is.

down in a hole

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Part of our "holiday" travels.